HBO points to Peter Todd as Satoshi, but the crypto community is skeptical

HBO’s documentary ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery’ revealed Canadian Bitcoin developer Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto, but the crypto community is not convinced.

Cullen Hobak, the producer of the highly anticipated documentary, provides several pieces of alleged evidence in the 100-minute-long feature that led to the conclusion that Todd, an early figure in the cryptocurrency space, was Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator.

Todd has been a Bitcoin Core Developer contributing to the cryptocurrency space for several years. He first became involved with cryptography and blockchain-related technologies at a young age, developing an interest in these fields in his teenage years.

His earliest documented engagement with Bitcoin dates back to the late 2000s when, at around 23 years old, he was already active in the crypto community, soon after the publication of the Bitcoin white paper in 2008.

In a 2019 podcast episode of What Bitcoin Did, Todd revealed that he was about 15 years old when he began communicating with early Bitcoin contributors like Hal Finney and Hashcash inventor Adam Back. These early interactions helped shape his later contributions to the Bitcoin space and cryptography in general.

In a 2018 interview with crypto.news, Todd revealed he worked as an analog electronics designer and a geophysics startup before his pivot to Bitcoin. 

He officially started working as a Bitcoin Core Developer at Coinkite in July 2014 and later held major roles, including serving as chief scientist at projects like Mastercoin and Dark Wallet.

Why is Todd Satoshi?

The key reason behind naming Todd stems from a collection of circumstantial evidence pieced together by Hobak, one of which is his cryptic online posts — notably one where he referred to himself as “the world’s leading expert on how to sacrifice your Bitcoins” — which is interpreted as veiled admissions, suggesting he may have destroyed access to the estimated 1.1 million BTC attributed to Nakamoto. 

The documentary further fueled speculation with claims that Todd once posted from Satoshi’s account on the BitcoinTalk forum in 2010, allegedly by accident. 

Additionally, Todd is credited with being a key advocate for Replace-by-Fee (RBF), a controversial topic within the community that proposed a mechanism that would allow a past transaction to be replaced by a new transaction that offers a higher fee. The documentary implied that this technical suggestion could have only come from someone with deep knowledge of Bitcoin’s original code—like Nakamoto.

Community debunks claims, and so does Todd

Despite these theories, Todd has continued to adamantly deny being Nakamoto, even before the documentary aired. More recently on Oct 8., he responded to a comment on X asking him to come out and deny HBO’s claim, to which the developer responded “I am not Satoshi.”

The crypto community was quick to debunk HBO’s claims. Web3 researcher Pix pointed out several key points where the documentary went wrong.

First, Pix noted that in 2008, Peter Todd was still finishing a fine arts degree and wasn’t even involved in the cryptography space, making it unlikely that he would have needed to use a pseudonym like Satoshi Nakamoto.

Next, Pix debunked HBO’s claim about a 2010 BitcoinTalk post, which suggested Todd accidentally revealed himself as Satoshi by not switching accounts. Pix argued that a follow-up post made 13 hours later was more likely a simple comment rather than evidence of a forgotten account switch.

Pix also addressed the RBF connection, explaining that Todd introduced RBF in 2014, years after Satoshi had already left the scene. HBO’s suggestion that this feature was pre-planned by Satoshi was dismissed as a major stretch.

Lastly, Pix tackled the “sacrificing bitcoins” message, clarifying that Todd’s cryptic comment was a joke about blockchain integrity, not an admission of destroying access to Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC. This key piece of evidence, according to Pix, was taken wildly out of context, further discrediting HBO’s claims.

Among other non-believers was CryptoQuant researcher Ki Young Ju, who labeled the documentary “disgusting.”

“It’s baffling they reached this conclusion when all the #Bitcoin experts disagree,” Ju wrote in an Oct. 9 X post.

BitMEX Research also joined the skeptics, calling the evidence presented by HBO “clearly ridiculous” and stating that there was “zero reason” to believe Peter Todd is Satoshi. 

Prominent figures in the community like Adam Back, who has long been linked to Bitcoin’s early development, and Satoshi himself, did not support the theory either. Back, who was featured in the documentary, refrained from giving credence to the speculation and simply stated, “no one knows who Satoshi is.”

Other market observers called the conclusion nothing but sloppy journalism.

A surprise for Polymarket bettors

Polymarket, a popular prediction market platform, had listed odds on who HBO’s documentary would identify as Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Peter Todd was not initially included as a betting option. 

Bettors were primarily focused on figures like Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman, both of whom have been frequently speculated as Bitcoin’s creators. Other contenders included Hal Finney and Elon Musk among others.

This omission is another testament to how unexpected and widely dismissed the documentary’s claim about Todd truly was.